I was asked via email this question:

Looking at simplecontrols.top in RAWDATA and from test chats, it looks like when the user has ‘activated’ a current topic and the gambits are exhausted, the chatbot will resort to saying ‘I don’t know what to say’. Is there a way to make it so that in the event that when all the gambits in the particular topic are exhausted, it would search and output a random gambit from another topic?

Also, when my testbot has no more gambits, it says ‘Hey, sorry. What were we talking about?’ instead of the default phrase in simplecontrols.top (‘I don’t know what to say’). I can’t find this phrase anywhere in in the simplecontrol.top. Where is the code for this bit?

———- my answer is:

I’m not sure what you are saying… The simplecontrols has this:

if (%response == 0)
{
@8 = ^GambitTopics() # all topics with gambits (excluding system topics)
loop()
{
$$topic = pick(@8)
nofail(TOPIC ^Gambit($$topic)) # try a topic at random
if (%response != 0)
{
^end(RULE)
}
}
}
which finds gambits from ANYWHERE.

What were we talking about comes from the engine itself, as a response of last resort if no response has been generated.

Hey Bruce,
Just testing with the default simpletopic.top (which includes ~introductions and ~childhood), I get this interaction:

HARRY: Welcome to Chatscript
Lillian: Hey Harry
HARRY: Have you been here before?
Lillian: Yes, I have
HARRY: I don’t know what to say

I assumed (looking at the code for simplecontrol.top) that since the topic ~childhood still had gambits, Harry would output a random gambit from there (i.e. Did you run away from home when you were little?, What scared you as a kid?) as oppose to ‘I don’t know what to say’ which seems to only execute when there are no gambits from ANY topic.

I hope this clarifies my previous question